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American Morning

Making the ID

Aired December 15, 2003 - 08:48   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: DNA testing is considered the best way to scientifically confirm that the man in U.S. custody is indeed Saddam Hussein and not one of his infamous body doubles.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us from the CNN Center with more on the process.

Good morning, Sanjay.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Anderson.

Yes, it's a very methodical approach. Certainly people pay a lot of attention to DNA testing. But even before that, just simple identity testing, looking at the man, looking at his height, looking at his mannerisms, looking at his voice, things like that, people, family members trying to identify him. Really the first step, any scars on his body. Remember that's one of the first things that was used to confirm Uday Hussein, those scars on his legs, same sorts of things before you proceed to any sort of scientific identity testing using DNA.

After that, really two requirements to successfully complete DNA testing. One is you need to have DNA from the person you think is Saddam Hussein, and you need to have DNA from the person that you know is Saddam Hussein. A big question is, how do you get DNA from someone previously, a list of things, a list of possible ways to possibly have gotten that DNA from Saddam Hussein. Perhaps from a drinking, perhaps from licking an envelope, a drinking glass, a razor blade, a previous sexual partner, hair, combs, we've heard about that before. And then also you can do sort of reverse DNA testing, looking at children and family members, as well, and reversing that.

Now, people talk about DNA testing, it takes about 10 hours or so, if you really hurry up the process, to get some of those test results back. If both those things are true, and if you have a match, you're going to be about 99.9 percent sure that, in fact, the person you have is Saddam Hussein.

COOPER: It certainly received kind of a bad rap over the years in a lot of court cases. Why is that? and I guess the new testing has really come a long way.

GUPTA: The new testing, again, what you're basically looking for is some of the repeat sequences within an individual's genome. That's a very unique sort of sequence. It's sort of a DNA fingerprint is sort of the title they give it when it comes to this sort of thing. The reason it's got a bad rap, going back to those two requirements I was just talking about, you got to make sure that the DNA you're testing is the person who you think you're testing against. So you had to have confirmed DNA, in this case, of Saddam Hussein.

If at any point during the process, either of these samples. either the sample that you have or the sample you're comparing it against, has been mishandled, misplaced or tampered with in any way, you suddenly throw the entire test into question. They're very accurate, Anderson. There have been some high profile cases where that sort of situation has occurred.

COOPER: Let's talk about some of the other things that a medical exam of Saddam Hussein might reveal.

GUPTA: Yes, you know, and we've seen the images now about Saddam Hussein being examined, things like that. Obviously, the first sort of steps, just logically, you're going to look to see if he's emaciated, how much weight he's lost. You look at the hair growth there. You want to do a general sort of physical exam. But also sort interestingly, when you're doing these sorts of exams, it's a little bit different, because in this case, you may want to analyze the skin and the hair. Has he had any exposure to biological or chemical weapons? Has he been in the proximity of those sorts of things? Sometimes some of that data can come back by looking at the person in other ways other than the conventional ones, and that might come up in the is situation as well.

COOPER: Fascinating stuff. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks.

Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired December 15, 2003 - 08:48   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: DNA testing is considered the best way to scientifically confirm that the man in U.S. custody is indeed Saddam Hussein and not one of his infamous body doubles.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us from the CNN Center with more on the process.

Good morning, Sanjay.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Anderson.

Yes, it's a very methodical approach. Certainly people pay a lot of attention to DNA testing. But even before that, just simple identity testing, looking at the man, looking at his height, looking at his mannerisms, looking at his voice, things like that, people, family members trying to identify him. Really the first step, any scars on his body. Remember that's one of the first things that was used to confirm Uday Hussein, those scars on his legs, same sorts of things before you proceed to any sort of scientific identity testing using DNA.

After that, really two requirements to successfully complete DNA testing. One is you need to have DNA from the person you think is Saddam Hussein, and you need to have DNA from the person that you know is Saddam Hussein. A big question is, how do you get DNA from someone previously, a list of things, a list of possible ways to possibly have gotten that DNA from Saddam Hussein. Perhaps from a drinking, perhaps from licking an envelope, a drinking glass, a razor blade, a previous sexual partner, hair, combs, we've heard about that before. And then also you can do sort of reverse DNA testing, looking at children and family members, as well, and reversing that.

Now, people talk about DNA testing, it takes about 10 hours or so, if you really hurry up the process, to get some of those test results back. If both those things are true, and if you have a match, you're going to be about 99.9 percent sure that, in fact, the person you have is Saddam Hussein.

COOPER: It certainly received kind of a bad rap over the years in a lot of court cases. Why is that? and I guess the new testing has really come a long way.

GUPTA: The new testing, again, what you're basically looking for is some of the repeat sequences within an individual's genome. That's a very unique sort of sequence. It's sort of a DNA fingerprint is sort of the title they give it when it comes to this sort of thing. The reason it's got a bad rap, going back to those two requirements I was just talking about, you got to make sure that the DNA you're testing is the person who you think you're testing against. So you had to have confirmed DNA, in this case, of Saddam Hussein.

If at any point during the process, either of these samples. either the sample that you have or the sample you're comparing it against, has been mishandled, misplaced or tampered with in any way, you suddenly throw the entire test into question. They're very accurate, Anderson. There have been some high profile cases where that sort of situation has occurred.

COOPER: Let's talk about some of the other things that a medical exam of Saddam Hussein might reveal.

GUPTA: Yes, you know, and we've seen the images now about Saddam Hussein being examined, things like that. Obviously, the first sort of steps, just logically, you're going to look to see if he's emaciated, how much weight he's lost. You look at the hair growth there. You want to do a general sort of physical exam. But also sort interestingly, when you're doing these sorts of exams, it's a little bit different, because in this case, you may want to analyze the skin and the hair. Has he had any exposure to biological or chemical weapons? Has he been in the proximity of those sorts of things? Sometimes some of that data can come back by looking at the person in other ways other than the conventional ones, and that might come up in the is situation as well.

COOPER: Fascinating stuff. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks.

Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com